Page 14 - MHC Magazine 2018

14 Milnerton Hebrew Congregation - High Holy Days 5779

The Redneck

by Rabbi Emanuel Feldman

I learned a valuable lesson that fretful Friday: it’s best to not judge other people.

It was Friday afternoon, about one hour before Shabbat, and I was anxiously driving my wife
home from the Atlanta hospital where she had just undergone an anesthetized medical proce-
dure. Her release had taken much longer than anticipated. After a short distance I realized that
the car was beginning to wobble. I pulled over to the curb, jumped out to inspect things, and
discovered that the left front tire had lost half of its air and would soon be entirely fl at.

There was no time to replace it with my spare, even if I knew how to do it - which, mechanically
challenged as I am, I did not. But there was a gasoline station a few blocks away where I could
obtain enough air to get us home before Shabbat.

With my wife, still slightly woozy, in the back seat, I drove slowly to the gas station, the car hob-
bling fi tfully on three and a half tires. Once in the station, I pulled up to the air pump, grateful
that we could now get home quickly.

Except there was a hand-scrawled sign on the face of the air pump: “Temporarily Out of Order.”

I took a deep breath, said a silent little prayer, and continued my uneasy 20-minute trek toward
home. At the next intersection I stopped at a traffi c light alongside a garish yellow pick-up
truck. The driver was a young man in his twenties, complete with a reversed baseball cap, a
Confederate fl ag fl ying from his aerial, the requisite rifl e stretched out along his rear window,
and obviously not Jewish. He rolled down his window and called out to me, “Hey, you got a fl at
there, fella!”

“I know,” I replied, and in desperation added, “you think you could possibly help me change it?
I’m taking my wife home from the hospital.”

The light turned to green. “Sorry,” he said rather gruffl y, “ain’t nuthin’ I can do.” And he roared
off in a cloud of foul-smelling black exhaust. His license plate showed that he was from Chero-
kee Country, a rural area in North Georgia.

So it goes, I muttered to myself, he must have noticed my yarmulke and beard. Probably an old
fashioned, genuine redneck anti-Semite. I was particularly annoyed by his brusqueness and the
roar with which he pulled away.

I continued driving - very carefully and gingerly. At the next corner a garish yellow pick- up truck
had pulled over to the curb. Standing beside it was the young redneck. He was motioning me to
park behind him.

I stopped and he walked over to me. “I just remembered. I have one of them temporary air fi ll-
ers. It gives enough air to go about ten miles. Would that get you to where you’re goin?”

“Defi nitely,” I said eagerly, “let’s do it.”

He went back to his truck and pulled out a small air compressor. “This here baby’ll do the trick
for you. I plumb forgot I owned one.” He kneeled to the ground, attached the compressor to
the tire, and gradually the air whooshed in and rounded out the tire to its full, pristine glory.
Deliverance! I offered to pay the cost of the compressor, but he waved me off. “Forget it. Ain’t
nuthin’. Happy to do a good deed for a change.”

And once again he jumped into his truck and roared off in a cloud of black exhaust. This time